Coach Carter - Movie Analysis

Coach Carter

        Coach Carter is based on a true story.  Ken Carter went back to his old school Richmond High to coach the basketball team.  He made his players sign a contract to maintain a 2.3 GPA, to attend and  seat in front of their class, and to wear a suit and tie on game day. Coach Carter instills the importance of education and respect to his players. The team won the basketball games but most of the players were either failing their class or have incomplete grades.  Coach Carter locked them out from the gym and met his players in the library.  It caught the media and school boards attention.  The board voted in favor for the lockout to be lifted; Coach Carter quits but his players refused to play until they hold up to their side of the contract.

        Richmond High was described as a Cinderella team since it had a winning streak that they did not experience in previous years.  Although the team did not win the state championship, they won five scholarships and six members of the team went to college. Coach Carter imparted to the boys that they cannot just depend on basketball for their future; education is the way out of poverty and to a better life.

        Although all the team members experienced a transformative learning from assuming that they just need to shoot hoops, score and win the game,  the awareness that education is an integral part of succeeding in life is showed in the character of Timo Cruz as he goes through the  process of transformational learning .  Timo Cruz is one of the boys from the basketball team which clearly does not see eye to eye with how Coach Ken Carter is handling the team.  Timo Cruz is ready to challenge Coach Carter from the beginning; Cruz’s identifying assumptions is that he is invisible and he is powerful, therefore no one should interfere with his decisions.  He was brought up by his Uncle who is a very well-known gang leader in the neighborhood.  Timo assumes that life is just all about gangs and drugs.  After he challenges Coach Carter when he does not want to follow the rules and the contract that he signed, Cruz spent a lot of time with his cousin Renny and followed his Uncle’s footsteps; got involved in drugs. Cruz’s identifying assumptions (Holt, 2010) is that he believes that his expected behavior if to be a “thug”, a hooligan. Analyzing the assumption of Cruz, that is the way he was brought up and that is how he was guided.  Mezirow (1991) stated that an individual’s lack of awareness of the difference between mindfulness and mindlessness can become a barrier on how one perceives experiences.  Cruz does not want to be told what to do, he wants to show that he is always in control (Cherry 2013).  This aggressive behavior towards Coach Carter did not seat well and Cruz left the  basketball team.  After he left the team, he would look from afar and watch the basketball team win games. He tried to convince himself that he was fine with it. But in the film it shows the confusion in his facial expression.  He was unconsciously questioning the real meaning of his assumptions (Holt, 2010).  He was torn if he wants to be with the team or stay in the drug business as loyalty to the people he considers his family.  He was torn between his devotions to the people who raised him -although not a good influence- and his passion for basketball and love for his teammates.  Testing his assumptions  (Popper as cited in Mezirow, 1991, p. 40) Cruz is trying to understand that the world is a continuous testing of his important expectations and not merely trying to extend his understanding.  Coach Carter asked Cruz twice, “What is your deepest fear?” but the team and Cruz were not able to answer Coach Carter.